Prologue of City Whitelight

          I just posted this prologue on the Meet Our Authors forum, so I thought I'd just put it here as well. 

Prologue

           When the destroyers had passed on and the dust settled, the few who remained began to build a maze of narrow alleyways encircled by a wide moat. Within the waters of this Outer Ring, a town grew up which could be defended - defended street by street. They called it the Medina.

Later, after many years had passed, a terrible plague visited the Medina, sparing those who fled across the Outer Ring, mostly people of property and capital - the rich. And just as the Medina was built for defence, so at that time it was easy to surround. While the plague raged, the rich severed the Medina from the beginnings of their New Town until almost all who remained in that warren were dead. Even when the plague disappeared, the people of the New Town remained separate. It suited them to stay that way.

Time passed. And outside the slowly shrinking waters of the Outer Ring, in what became known as the Borders, factories were built. Those from the Medina who could find work, worked there and at night returned to the place where the population multiplied despite the most abominable human conditions, bred and spilled out into the marsh where once the waters of the Outer Ring had been. Soon enough, some from the Medina began to live in towering tenement slums built beside the factories.

But the system which bound together the various parts of the city began to break down and that area at the heart of the place, which became known in its entirety as Centrum, was gradually encircled with wire and a band of derelict waste prowled by wild, ferocious dogs. Except for the Grand Bazaar at the edge of the Borders, where things were bought and sold each day, the inner city was completely isolated.

Yet for many years still men were allowed to pass through the Grand Bazaar and work by day in the New Town. Then one morning, without warning, an edict was posted banning all movement from the heart of the city. Rumours of a new plague, or so it was thought, caused Centrum to be sealed off completely. But nothing was said, no reason given.  

             For almost two weeks now a hush of expectancy hung over the centre of the city, but all that was ever heard from the direction of the New Town were dogs baying at the moon. Yet on this night a storm brewed and the dogs were silenced. ...